Do you often experience “flashes of brilliance?”

Me neither.

But something similar occurred the other day as I watched Chris Porter, an amazing band director and Finale user, demonstrating at a Finale training session. While Chris knows all about Finale’s Exercise Wizard, she was showing how she creates additional customized exercises for her band’s warm-ups.

I admired her efficiency as she worked. Rather than create a full score, she simply entered five staves, one for each of the various transpositions:

1. Non-transposed instruments in treble clef (flutes, oboes),
2. Eb instruments (alto and bari saxes),
3. Bb instruments (clarinets, tenor saxes, and trumpets),
4. F instruments (horns),
5. Non-transposed instruments bass clef (bassoons and trombones)

Very smart.

Next she entered her warm-up on one staff…

…and then copied the contents of this staff to all the subsequent staves, one staff at a time.

Everyone was duly impressed.

But as I watched I thought of one additional trick she could use to become even more efficient. We call it vertical copying.

Here’s how it works:

1. With the Selection Tool indicate the music you’d like to copy into other staves.
2. Now, Ctrl+Alt+click (Windows) or Ctrl+Opt+click (Mac) on the first staff/measure in which you’d like this music copied.

3. In the Paste Multiple box that appears, simply indicate you wish to “Paste Vertically: To the bottom of the score,” and hit OK (or your Enter key). Every staff is populated:

That’s a great time saver.

Need to transpose the bottom two staves? Select them and hit “8,” and they’re transposed down an octave. (I discussed transposition and other helpful shortcuts in an earlier post.)

What makes the vertical copying tip really great is that the procedure and keystrokes are the same as for horizontal copying, where you copy a section of music multiple times on the same staff. Again, just select the music you wish to copy, then Ctrl+Alt+click (Windows) or Ctrl+Opt+click (Mac) on the first measure in which you’d like the paste to occur, and indicate what you want copied where and how many times.

Simply remembering this keystroke shortcut can be a huge time saver on certain projects: I hope you get as much use out of it as I do.

Let us know how it’s working for you by clicking on “Comments” below.